


With Friends Like These

by cygnes



Category: American Psycho - All Media Types, The Invitation (2015)
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 14:29:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8059924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnes/pseuds/cygnes
Summary: Patrick reunites with some old friends, for better or worse.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://manzanas-amargas.tumblr.com/post/150192118490/a-belated-prompt-with-hugs-because-i-just-saw) on my tumblr. Written for [scioscribe](http://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe), for the prompt " _The Invitation/American Psycho_ mash-up." 
> 
> Set loosely in the late 1990s, with some references to the [American Psycho 2000 emails](http://www.briankotek.com/psycho/movie/am2000.cfm), though they aren't required reading. And if anyone catches it: the reference to the musical _Company_ is intentional.
> 
> _The Invitation_ is a really great, really tight psychological thriller. It moves slowly, for most of the film, but builds tension super effectively. It's currently on Netflix, at least in the U.S., if anyone's interested.
> 
> Warning for violent fantasies and pervasive misogyny.

They’ve barely seen each other in the past decade, but Evelyn still looks like herself.

“Patrick,” she greets him coolly, kissing the air next to his cheek. The skin across her cheekbones is slightly tight, but the facelift she must have had is otherwise subtle. (If anyone asks him later, Patrick will describe her face as frozen, masklike, grotesque. He will think this is the truth.)

“Evelyn,” Patrick says. He can’t remember her last name. She’s been divorced twice now. That might not be the problem—he can’t remember what her last name was when they were together, either.

“Jean couldn’t make it?” Evelyn says. The intervening years have made her crisper, less energetic. Less hysterical.

“Jean didn’t want to come,” Patrick says, “seeing as how you were always such a bitch to her.” This last part is true. The first part is not: Jean isn’t here because she didn’t know about the little gathering. She doesn’t know Patrick is here and probably doesn’t care to know. They’re doing the whole ‘trial separation’ thing, which everyone knows is less a matter of getting space for reconciliation and more a matter of mustering their separate forces for the inevitable divorce. It will be a battle. By hook or by crook (or by crowbar), Patrick plans to win.

“Too bad,” Evelyn says. “You’re unfashionably late, you know.”

“It’s not your party, so I don’t see why you care.” It’s David Van Patten’s party, sort of. It’s at Van Patten’s apartment, anyway. The whole old crew together again: Van Patten and McDermott, Tim Price, Victor Powell (who Patrick thought might be dead), Marcus Halberstam (who Patrick thought might have left the city). Luis and Courtney, politely avoiding each other. And some girl Van Patten is dating, who looks like she’s on enough tranquilizers to dope a horse.

Well, maybe it’s ketamine.

Tim Price is stretched out on half of the couch. He’s well on his way to drunk, so he doesn’t get up when Patrick walks in, but he does raise his glass.

“Patrick _Bate_ man,” Price says. “Fuck. Look what the cat dragged in. How have you _been_?”

“What, don’t you read the business section anymore?” Patrick says. Tim grins, shakes his head.

Patrick’s eyes slide over to Van Patten’s girlfriend. Her name had been on the invitation, too, but he doesn’t remember it now. She is glassy-eyed, and her joints seem to hang oddly loose. At a slightly different kind of party (only slightly different; without Evelyn and Courtney in attendance, and with a bag of blow on the table in plain sight instead of tucked away in someone’s pocket) he might get to know her better. Get to know her mouth and her cunt better, anyway.

“You’re not the last to arrive,” she says. Her eyes aren’t focused on him. She seems to be addressing him anyway. “We have some friends coming. To help us.”

“Aren’t we your friends?” McDermott says, snaking an arm around her waist. She doesn’t look at him.

“Of course,” she says, and then: “Can I get you some more wine, Craig?” She has slid out of his grasp and is halfway to the kitchen before he can respond.

“Jesus,” McDermott says, staring after her. “Where’d you find this girl, Dave?”

“We met in Mexico,” Van Patten says. “That retreat I told you about.”

“Sounded like a cult to me,” Halberstam says a little too brightly.

“Oh, shut _up_ , Marcus,” Tim says. He has slipped lower on the couch, and seems almost to be melting. “The East Coast is just behind the curve. Half of the West Coast is doing The Invitation.”

“Half of California, you mean,” Luis says into his wineglass. “I doubt it’s caught on in Portland yet.”

“Oh, as if those crunchy granola assholes even count,” Tim says.

“What about you, Tim?” Van Patten says. “Have you accepted The Invitation?” Something about the cadence of his voice is wrong, like he’s reciting a script. Patrick knows the sound of it because most of what he himself says sounds that way to his own ears. Maybe he and Van Patten have more in common than their tax bracket, though Patrick thinks he would have noticed before now. There’s a hollowness he would expect to see—

(—a hollowness in the listless, meandering lines of Van Patten’s girlfriend’s body, but then, she is just some _body_ , not really _some_ body—)

“Tell me you’re not going to proselytize your self-help bullshit,” Tim says. He rolls his eyes and his head tips back against the cushions. “We’re all doing fine. Pictures of mental health.”

“Speak for yourself,” says a voice from somewhere behind him. Patrick turns. It’s Courtney, looking just as well-preserved as Evelyn, though perhaps more tired. He knows her face, but the voice doesn’t seem to match it. “I appreciate the spirit of the attempt, Dave, I really do. But if you’re going to try to convert me, I’m going to call and tell the babysitter I’ll be home early.”

Babysitter. That was something Patrick had heard about but not really thought about: Courtney as a mother. She seems just as trim has she has always been, but a black sheath dress might hide a multitude of sins. No, he thinks, she must be as he remembers her: she would have hired a nutritionist, a personal trainer specializing in postpartum fitness. There’s probably only a scar slung low across her hips, just beneath the line of her underwear. C-sections are quicker, easier to schedule, less physically taxing in some ways. He could split open that neat little seam. Hollow out her abdominal cavity one organ at a time.

Victor is saying something, making Marcus laugh and Tim snicker, so Patrick smiles along automatically. Luis isn’t smiling. He’s turning, looking past Patrick, and so is Dave.

“Everybody here?” says another unfamiliar voice. Patrick expects it to belong to a familiar face, since that has happened once already, but no: he doesn’t know this man, or the woman with him. (Or he does, and has blanked them out entirely.) The man is good-looking, with a slight resemblance to Jeff Goldblum. The woman is dark-haired, dark-eyed, not unattractive but not gorgeous. She doesn’t look like anyone but herself. They both seem very alert, even excited.

“Thanks for waiting for us,” the woman says. “Traffic was hell.”

“You think New York is bad? Visit me in L.A.” Tim winks at her. She smiles. There’s a smudge of dark lipstick on her front tooth, but she’s not wearing lipstick.

Van Patten’s girlfriend presses a glass of wine into his hand. She has breezed back into the room, slippery and silent. Everyone is holding wine, even the strangers. Patrick takes a sip. It’s dry but not astringent, fruity but not overly so. Complex. It’s good. He can’t identify the vintage, and would only embarrass himself by asking.

The girlfriend is bending over, putting a DVD in their player, showing off her ass. She doesn’t have much of an ass to speak of, so he lets his gaze drift away. The strangers are leaning into each other, too in-sync. There’s something incestuous about their closeness, about the way they seem to draw Van Patten into their orbit. They are tightly wound where the girlfriend is loosely strung together; they are a matched set, all four of them. Maybe it’s a sex thing.

Van Patten takes the lead. “You’ve probably heard of The Invitation,” he starts. Courtney stands immediately and sets her glass down on the coffee table.

“I wasn’t kidding, Dave,” she says. She seems more annoyed than angry. “Thanks for the wine.”

“Oh, I’ll get that for you,” the girlfriend says.

“No need,” Courtney says. “I’ll see myself out.” But then: she doesn’t.

She can’t. The door is locked.

“Sorry, sorry,” the girlfriend says with a blank smile. “I’m a little paranoid about security in this building.” She takes out a key from somewhere in the pleating of her dress and unlocks it. Courtney, perturbed, leaves without another word.

Van Patten cues up the DVD, which involves people doing tai chi and a soothing voice talking nonsense about trauma and recovery and potential. Then it gets interesting.

Patrick knows what a death rattle sounds like. The woman in the video isn’t acting. It’s not a matter of dramatic effect. He watches her die and thinks _this is a snuff film_. The others debate tightly over whether it was real, what the point of it was, what she died of. The strange woman catches Patrick’s eye and smiles again, close-lipped. She knows he knows.

Van Patten’s girlfriend takes the lead when things quiet down a little. A party game.

“Tell us something that you want,” she says. “Something true.”

“I’ll go first,” Van Patten says. “I want you all to know how glad I am that you could make it, and how much it means to me that you came at all. I want you to know how much The Invitation has helped me. I mean, after my sister died, I was a mess.” Patrick didn’t know David had a sister. He’s still not sure he believes it. It seems too random, too convenient. “But I’m not, now. I see things more clearly. I’ve got a purpose. Everything is leading to something else. Something good.”

“Oh, can I go next?” Tim says, finally sitting up all the way. “I _want_ to _know_ … whether Luis is gay.”

“Fuck you,” Luis hisses. He sets his glass down next to Courtney’s, preparing to flee. His jaw is clenched tight, as is one fist, resting on the arm of the couch.

“But you didn’t!” Tim says. “So how can I be sure?”

“This isn’t truth or dare, this isn’t summer camp—”

“I bet I could ask someone else here,” Tim says. “You and Marcus, right? Back when we were all at P&P?” Marcus avoids his gaze.

“Tim, come on,” Van Patten says. “That’s not really the purpose of the activity.”

“Listen, I’m self-actualizing. I’m trying to figure out whether I should bother asking him to come home with me tonight.” Tim raises his glass in Luis’s direction. “Interested, Carruthers?” For a long moment, the room seems to hold its collective breath. Patrick can’t exhale. It’s beyond his control.

“I’ll think about it,” Luis says finally. “No promises. Christ, Tim.”

“Me next,” Evelyn says. “I want a shot of vodka and whatever she’s having.” She points at the girlfriend, who laughs, high and light, like birdsong.

“Come on, then,” the girlfriend says, taking Evelyn’s hand and leading her down the hall. 

“Wow,” Victor says. “So that’s happening.”

“What about you, Pat?” Tim says. “Got any deep dark desires to inflict on us?”

“Tim, I’ve been telling you for years,” Patrick says. “You just never seem to listen.”

“We’re listening now,” the strange woman says. Her eyes are deep and dark. He imagines them scooped out, laid on a saucer. But he doesn’t say so.

Because that’s the thing: he believes her. They are listening.


End file.
